PrintJune 22, 2010
The Oldest Disease
On January 7, 1939, author E.M. Forster published a piece entitled "Jew-Consciousness" in the New Statesman and Nation. He considered the "Jew mania" of World War I and contemplated the rabid antisemitism then beginning to emerge in World War II. He wrote,
Jew-mania was the one evil which no one foretold at the close of the last war. All sorts of troubles were discerned and discernible-nationalism, class-warfare, the split between the haves and the have-nots, the general lowering of cultural values. But no prophet, so far as I known, had foreseen this anti-Jew horror, whereas today no one can see the end of it. There had been warnings, of course.... Back in India, in 1921, a Colonel lent me the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and it was such an obvious fake that I did not worry....To me, anti-Semitism is now the most shocking of all things. It is destroying much more than the Jews; it is assailing the human mind at its course, and inviting it to create false categories before exercising judgment. I am sure we shall win through. But it will take a long time. Perhaps a hundred years must pass before men can think back to the mentality of 1918 or can say with the Prophet Malachi, "Have we not all one father? Hath not one God created us?" For the moment, all that we can do is to dig in our heels, and prevent silliness from sliding into insanity.
Fast forward to Wall Street Journal of June 21, 2010 where Shelby Steele writes,
Rock bands now find moral imprimatur in canceling their summer tour stops in Israel .... A demonstrator at an anti-Israel rally in New York carries a sign depicting the skull and crossbones drawn over the word ‘Israel.' White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink. This is something new in the world, this almost complete segregation of Israel in the community of nations....There is a chilling familiarity in all this. One of the world's oldest stories is playing out before our eyes: The Jews are being scapegoated again."
Seventy-one years and the insanity rears its despicable head again and again and again.
Hatred against the Jew is the world's oldest disease. Mr. Steele has written that "one reason for this [hatred against Jews and Israel] is that the entire Western world has suffered from a deficit of moral authority for decades now.
Born in 1923, poetess Wislawa Szymborska, like many intellectuals in Poland, initially praised Stalin, Lenin, and socialism. Eventually she realized the folly of the official party line and renounced her earlier political work. Consequently she grew estranged from socialist ideology and her poem entitled "Hatred" seems to embody what we are seeing again in the world today.
See how efficient it still is
How it keeps itself in shape-
Our century's hatred...
How it keeps itself in shape-
Our century's hatred...
It's always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
And gazes unflinchingly at the future
As only it can.
If it has to wait awhile, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It has a sniper's keen sight
And gazes unflinchingly at the future
As only it can.
We need the good folk of America to "dig in [their] heels", to prevent the further growth of this insanity. We can expect no assistance from the 44th president nor from the current democratically-held congress. Every morning I wake up with a deep heaviness because I see my people being demonized, denigrated, and destroyed. Only freedom loving Americans and Israelis, with one clear voice, can hold back the odium of the world. If not, we can expect a return to such ruin that even God will turn away in shame.
Eileen can be reached at middlemarch18@gmail.com.
